Northkeep
Northkeep was the first city built around the Moonsea by humans. History The city was founded in 348 DR (Year of the Dagger) on an island near the lake's southern shore, about midway between the present towns of Elventree and Elmwood. The city was a beacon of civilization and a jumping off point for merchants. The power of Northkeep made it a target for orcs, giants, and other evil beings, who formed the Dark Alliance to battle and contain Northkeep. Northkeep appeared safe on its island, but in 400 DR (Year of the Blue Shield), a huge force mounted on dragonback swept over the city while ships landed an army that overran and sacked the city. To make their victory complete, a force of nonhuman mages and clerics (forty thousand strong, some say) gathered on the north shore of the Moonsea and brought the vengeance of Gruumsh down upon the human interlopers. The city sank beneath the purple waves. Features The Bell in the Deep: This bell sits in one of the tallest of the shattered towers of the sunken city. At times, nearby ships can hear the ghostly bell ring. The sunken city is reputed to be haunted. city of sunken Northkeep: not its present state, as the Bell of the Depths/Bell in the Deep, with cruel marels lurking around it, but what it was like before its sinking by shamans of the flind-led gnolls of Flindyke in 400 DR (when the city had been flourishing for over fifty years). The first part of Ed’s reply follows: Today, the sunken ruins of Northkeep are about fifteen miles offshore (that is, north of the southern shore of the Moonsea) at a point about halfway between Elventree and Elmwood. In the days before its sinking, Northkeep was only about two miles offshore. The great magic that sunk Northkeep was a divine act of titanic force, wherein the rock ceilings of a series of partially-water-filled Underdark caverns (a ‘sea beneath the Moonsea’) were blasted to rubble by humanoid deities answering the prayers of the shamans - - so the hilly island on which Northkeep stood collapsed down into the sudden hole, the Moonsea flooded the Underdark basin beneath it, and a cape that had formerly jutted out into the Moonsea, with Northkeep situated on an island off its tip, ceased to exist (also collapsing into the depths). The rolling surface of Northkeep Isle cracked in countless places as it fell, and most buildings were tumbled into rubble, but some still stand to this day on the seabed, albeit usually tilted crazily from the vertical. Extensive cellars and underground tunnels beneath the island’s surface, though cracked in countless places, largely survived their descent into the watery depths. But enough of cataclym: back to earlier days, and the rise of what became Northkeep . . . Northkeep was first settled continuously (as opposed to being a seasonal camp) in 348 DR. From the first, it was a supply base and defensible refuge for human traders from warmer, more southerly lands seeking the mineral wealth of Thar and the other cold lands north of the Moonsea (and in later years, as these things grew scarcer closer to home, the southerners sought bulk pelts and timber, too). From the beginning it was a citadel (hence its name), initially a timber palisade around a conical tower at the northeastern tip of the island, that swiftly grew larger. The defensible nature of the island (separated from the mainland by a strait too wide for humanoid armies to hurl or fire things over, so would-be invaders were forced to make or seize boats or rafts to attempt invasions, and during such water-crossing assaults were easy pray for defenders using fire-arrows) was what made it attractive in the first place. The ‘Northkeep’ name was soon applied to both settlement and island, as the one grew to cover the other. (To the flind, gnolls, orcs, and hobgoblins, the island was “Haardhahr.”) Even at its height, Northkeep lacked proper walls all around its shores, but had tall fortified towers at its northwesternmost point (Harl’s Gard), its northeasternmost point (Storm Gard), at its center (the legendary Tower of the Bells), and a row of towers linked by castle walls along its southern shore (the Battle Wall, more widely and informally known as ‘the Frowning Towers’). All of these soaring, massive keeps housed armories and were topped with huge catapults. These weapons usually hurled loads of great boulders, and were mostly used to swiftly break Moonsea ice in winter if invading armies threatened to cross it from the shore to the southern tip of the island (though in later years, Northkeep’s defenders exhaustively practised aiming and firing the catapults, and became skilled enough to readily sink vessels in surrounding waters). Northkeep grew to entirely cover the island, which was roughly diamond-shaped, with its long axis running north-south and the ‘long narrow point’ southernmost (think of a geometrically-perfect diamond with a blocky outgrowth on the northeastern or “1 to 2 o’clock” quadrant of its narrow or northernmost end, that extended the diamond east another half of the width of a geometrically-perfect diamond). The long axis of Northkeep Isle was three miles in length, and before its transformation at the hands of the builders of the ever-expanding city, the island consisted of rolling, wooded hills of thick organic soil over clay, that in turn overlaid fissured, fractured rock, through which springs bubbled up. The island was windscoured (which kept fogs to a minimum), and the weather generally wet, but trees were everywhere and marshes few. Until its last twenty or so years of existence, most of the middle of Northkeep Isle was occupied by farms (which grew food crops for the ever-growing city) and a steadily-dwindling ‘tall forest’ of shadowtops and duskwoods that were cut for building timbers. In the end, the city of Northkeep entirely swallowed these open lands, leaving only a few parks, many small stockyards and paddocks for grazing not-yet-butchered ‘food on the hoof’ and mounts and pack-beasts for sale to traders and explorers, and several open marketplaces. Over time, the city-dwellers transformed this ‘crowd of cottages’ into cobbled streets lined by tall stone buildings crowded together, with extensive granary-cellars beneath (though these are often referred to as “dungeons” today, very few of them were ever intended for incarceration or as dwelling-places, but rather as armories and storage-spaces, used as easy highways only when heavy winter snows drove folk underground). The illustration on the cover of my novel ELMINSTER’S DAUGHTER is actually pretty close to the ‘look’ of the bell-towers that topped many of the city buildings from about 366 DR onwards (the bells were used to signal across the island, warning of all unfamiliar foreign vessel approaches and of other observed perils; in the early days of Northkeep, until adventurers hunted many of these menaces down, dragon and wyvern food-foraging raids were frequent). Before that date, tall stone towers were few, and most folk lived in increasingly-crowded-together thatched fieldstone cottages fronting on a maze of cobbled roads (the climate was wet, and frozen churned-up mud is no easier to traverse than soft, sucking mud). Over the years, Northkeep was home to a variety of peoples, most of them Damaran humans. From the first settlement, halflings and gnomes dwelt in Northkeep; families of the latter worked tirelessly to build and rebuild the city, quarrying stone from cliffs around the Moonsea and from the spine of Northkeep Isle itself to make the fitted blocks of which the city was built (they were fond of carving the top of a block with a slight ridge or spine, onto which a corresponding ‘trough’ in the base of the block placed atop it fitted, to help bind walls together). Their architecture was simple, oversized, massive, and durable, made with ‘expansion cracks’ and the like to withstand the cruel cold, ice, and everpresent chilling winds of the island. Most buildings were entered through doors shielded from the passing wind by a small L-shaped ‘cloak wall’ that projected out from the outer wall of the building the width of a stout man, and then turned to parallel that outer wall for some twelve feet or so. Such windbreaks never guarded all entrances to a building (there were always larger, unencumbered ones for the passage of furniture, mounted men, wagons, and pushcarts), but they did shield the most commonly-used entrances, and were usually bedecked with climbing vines of edibles (such as the draeldagger, a close Realms equivalent to what we might call a ‘scarlet runner bean’). Except during the harshest winter storms, large numbers of traders were always coming and going, but from the first Northkeep retained a permanent, year-round population. It became a city of hardy folk (overwhelmingly humans, most of an athletic, warlike or entrepreneurial bent) who never lost the feeling of being a garrison against cruel weather and more cruel foes. ‘Northel,’ as this citizenry were collectively called, wore their hair long and seldom shaved, preferring to stay hairy and thereby keep warm. They customarily wore furs, knitted hoods, and huge woolen cloaks, stripping down to leather breeches and vests over thick doeskin jerkins only in the warmest months. Northel drank much small beer and wine (none of it distinguished; for such purposes, they bought something finer than local ‘warmbelly’ from visiting traders), ate much locally-made goat cheese (many goats were kept on the island) and roundloaves of bread, dined on both meats of the then-numerous wild herds of beasts (rothé and the like) around the Moonsea and fish netted in the Moonsea, and spiced their cuisine with much sage and mint and other mainland wild plants. Almost their only distinctive dish was ‘braethyn,’ a thick broth of mushrooms, sea ivy (the salty seaweed of the Moonsea that so often fouls fishing nets), wild onions, shoreleaf shoots (green young roots, very similar to potato sprouts), and diced wildfowl. Braethyn tastes like something between a stir fry and beef stew, and is still popular around the Moonsea today. Northel must have dined often on eels, because they almost exterminated them in the formerly ‘teeming with blackslitherers’ waters around the mouth of the River Duathamper (better known to humans of the time as the Elvenflow). Entertainments in Northkeep were dominated by gambling games, betting on goods-investments for the coming season, and betting on which Northel hunters would kill the most stags (or monsters, or the most powerful monster) during the long winters. Northel also played elaborate wargames using Moonsea maps, stone tokens for fleets and armies, and cards depicting storms, beast raids, thaws, and treasure discoveries. These were most popular in the cold months, because in the warmer days such games were played ‘for real,’ in an ongoing struggle to get rich swifter than thy neighbor, and be ‘in the know’ (informed of unfolding events first and fastest, and thus able to invest more shrewdly than those slower to hear news, by using what we moderns would call “insider information”). Northkeep was governed by ‘the Wise’ (a council of wealthy merchants and caravan masters), who commanded ‘the Lords Protector (a hired professional garrison of defenders, who in times of attack were to command a general citizen militia), but increasingly real power was held by certain independent wizards brought to the city by various merchant cabals. In time, these mages came to dominate and even hold covert power of life and death over ‘their’ merchants, and either control members of the Wise as puppets or openly become members of the Wise themselves. These wizards were rivals, never a cohesive power group, and sages record no collective name for them except the disparaging term ‘Farspells’ (meaning: hurlers-of-spells-who-come-from-far-away) given to them by some Northel who saw their selfish machinations as an increasing peril to Northkeep. In this view, they were ultimately correct (see the Portals of the Moonsea web article by Skip Williams, on the WotC website); one wizard ultimately betrayed the city (by giving information about some of the spells defending the island - - notably those strengthening the bedrock of the island, cast after certain mages learned of the existence of the Underdark ‘sea under the Moonsea’ - - to some humanoids, in return for fabulous wealth and a promise of rulership over Northkeep), making its doom possible. Before that cataclysmic ending, Northkeep grew wealthy, crowded, and bustling day and night, its folk full of energy and ideas and ambition, the gem and mineral wealth of the lands north of the Moonsea flooding into its streets. Trade-rivalries were fierce, but most folk were too busy to carry on lasting feuds or try to establish a nobility; if one job or business venture didn’t work out, most folk simply turned to another. The most powerful or swift-rising Northel were always in need of new folk to work for them, and there was work and wealth enough for all (no matter how many folk flooded into the city in search of riches). The Farspells crafted gates (portals) to other Moonsea cities, even before some of those cities were more than rough outpost settlements. These magical transports were used mainly by (trade agents of) the merchant patrons of the powerful wizards who created them (and details of them appear in the Portals of the Moonsea web article). A typical Northkeep building in the later days, when the city covered its island, was a tall rectangular block built of fitted stone, with few windows on the north or west sides (from which most winds blew) and balconies in its upper levels only. To its rear was situated a small walled yard housing an ‘on poles’ garden of edibles and a stables (with egress onto a mews-like shared back alley). It would have one level of cellars suited for food storage, a shop or business offices on the ground level, and three levels of living quarters above; a goodly number of Northel lived above shops they owned, in buildings they owned. The roof would be of fluted metal, tile, or slate, steeply pitched from a central ridgepeak to shed water, ice, and snow; its corners would have carved stone ‘beast-face’ downspouts, and the roof-sides would be fitted with periodic sharp out-thrusting vertical fins to break winter ice into small ‘tumbles’ instead of letting huge sheets of ice slide off and fall on the heads of passersby below (a frequent occurrence with unbroken metal roofs in cold climates). The building would have a central bank of chimneys, screened at the top to keep nesting birds from clogging them, with hearths on every level (so rooms were coldest at the outside walls, which were often hung with thick tapestries, and warmest near the center of the building, which is where most beds and lounge-chairs were situated). Furniture was usually of wood and of simple, massive construction -- though traders brought all manner of variety from afar, and most Northel bought at least some ‘exotic’ things from elsewhere in Faerûn to demonstrate their worldly-wise sophistication (where they in fact possessed such, or not). Northel roads began as simple two-wagon-wide strips of loose-laid cobbles, always ‘crumbling away at the edges,’ and by the time the city had grown to cover the island, had advanced to being a little wider, built with a center ‘crown’ or high spot/ridge, sloping to drainage gutters at both edges consisting of two rows of cobbles laid on edge, on either side of a row of cobbles laid flat. One edge-row ran along the edge of the cobbled road, and the other along the edge of building-curbs, and the lower-down flat row between them was sealed with cement (yes, this ‘hard sand’ mix is known in the Realms, particularly among gnomes and dwarves) to form a smooth-ish channel for water runoff. The early roads were laid directly on soil, and the later ones atop a layer of tamped-hard fine gravel put on the soil under the cobbles. The south shore of the Moonsea closest to Northkeep was dominated by dozens of privately-built wharves that were usually crowded with large barges and ‘storm-wallow’ cogs (so named for their handling in rough seas). These developed over the years, in muddy competing profusion, and the Wise were careful to make sure (by covert murders, if need be) that no one person or cabal came to own, control, or dominate a majority of them, so as to keep access to Northkeep as cheap and easy as possible (and prevent any treachery through any dock-owner having private dealings with humanoids or Northkeep’s rival trading cities farther south). This area was known simply as ‘the Docks’ (though elves called it ‘the Stinking Mud’ for good descriptive reasons), and though the Lords Protector eventually established large armed patrols and an armory there to keep order, it always had a certain air of lawlessness, with bodies turning up floating in the shallows or found huddled behind wagons on many a morning. Many roads and wagon-trails converged on the Docks, and although there were usually many caravans encamped and mustering (or dispersing), and enough human trading traffic (complete with warehouses, wagon-makers, blacksmiths, and brothels) to make elves more or less permanently withdraw from the shoreline, few folk actually lived in the vicinity of Northkeep along that south shore. For one thing, there were always a few lurking brigands, and for another, the land was thick woods swiftly being cut down for firewood and reduced to rutted mud rather than being cultivated and looked after. There were exceptions: about a day’s ride west of the Docks was Smiling Lady Well, where the Faithful Sisters of Tymora had a temple-farm (the closest thing to ‘nuns of Tymora’ that Faerûn has ever seen) that provided a lot of table vegetables, herbs, and grains for Northkeep, and west of there (and starting about three days’ ride east of the Docks) were several small coastal fishing-hamlets, most housing no more than forty-odd humans. Sages know the names of some of them: the first west of Smiling Lady Well was called Rorthimur, and the one west of that was Ryll’s Rocks; and the closest one east of the Docks was Marthelspike. All of these places sank along with Northkeep, and no trace of them (visible ruins) can be seen on the Moonsea seabed now. Category:Locations on the Moonsea Category:Ruined settlements